Trump was set to ‘let it rip’ with the press. Then came shots, chaos and a call for unity

WASHINGTON— President Trump was preparing to take the stage at the White House Correspondents’ Assn. At dinner Saturday night, he was eager to “let it go,” as he put it, in front of a room of Washington elites and reporters he had called enemies of the people for years.

Then gunshots were heard. Secret Service agents led him away from the stage. And within hours the president was at the White House, calling for unity and making overtures to the press corps with which he had long clashed.

“I just want to say you did a great job, what a great evening it was, and we’ll reschedule the program,” Trump told Weijia Jiang, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, at a news conference after the dinner shooting.

His generosity did not last long. Sitting down for an interview with Norah O’Donnell of CBS’ “60 Minutes” on Sunday night, Trump reacted angrily to her reading of the suspected gunman’s manifesto, calling it a “disgrace.”

The manifesto stated that their targets were rapists and pedophiles.

“You are terrible people. Terrible people,” Trump said. “He wrote this. I’m not a rapist. I didn’t rape anyone.”

“I’m not a pedophile. Did you read this nonsense from a sick person? I’ve been associated with everything that has nothing to do with me,” he added. “You should be ashamed of yourself for reading this because I am none of those things.”

It marked a return to the familiar dynamic between the president and the press after a night of shared crisis and purpose, raising doubts about how long the goodwill would last.

Just hours earlier, at the briefing, Trump expressed regret over the violent explosion at the Washington Hilton, where the black-tie event has been held for more than 50 years.

“Let me tell you, I fought like hell to stay, but it was protocol,” the president said. He reiterated his desire to reschedule the event, telling Fox News on Sunday that he was committed to attending in the near future, even offering to do so within 30 days.

Trump appeared to be having fun before Cole Tomas Allen, a 31-year-old teacher from Torrance, allegedly passed a security checkpoint at the hotel and fired two shots. In the videos, Oz Pearlman, the night’s entertainer and mentalist, appears to be performing a number for the president and first lady when shots are heard.

Trump was preparing to make statements at the end of the night. His team was excited about it, and the president was making adjustments to his speech on Air Force One by Saturday morning.

“It’s going to be funny. It’s going to be fun,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said at the red carpet event before the dinner.

The speech would be Trump’s first at the White House correspondents’ dinner. He told Fox News on Sunday that he was “going to let all hell break loose” and that he viewed this moment as a “major event” until it stopped.

Trump stated that he wanted to reschedule the event next month and said he would give a “completely different speech” and that it would focus on “love.”

It’s unclear how long Trump’s media-friendly tone will last, but some Republicans have continued to blame journalists for the violent action. Kari Lake, senior counsel at the US Agency for Global Media, said some reporters who attended the event had “spread absolute lies” about Trump for a decade.

Trump, for his part, used the security breach at the event to defend the White House ballroom project, claiming that the Washington Hilton “is not a particularly safe building” and a prime example of why legal challenges blocking its construction should be dismissed.

“We need a ballroom,” Trump told reporters. “We need security today at a level that probably no one has ever seen before.”

But the venue for the annual dinner is chosen not by the White House but by the White House Correspondents’ Association, an independent organization of journalists who cover the president.

Trump promised to return to the event in the near future and called for it to be held within the next month to show that “bad people” cannot “change the course of the country.” However, it was not possible for the ballroom project to be ready so quickly.

Trump said construction is ongoing and “ahead of schedule.” Earlier this month, federal appeals court allows construction The project is expected to continue until early June as legal challenges remain.

Construction of the $400 million ballroom on the White House grounds has come under intense scrutiny. The National Trust for Historic Preservation, which filed a lawsuit to stop the project last year, argued that Trump did not have the authority to make architectural changes on the White House grounds.

Carol Quillen, president and chief executive of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, argued that the White House is “the most impressive building in our country” and that any changes should go through a review process, including a public comment period. Trump on Sunday described the lawsuit as one filed by “a woman walking the dog.”

The attempted attack, which saw Trump face gunman threats for the third time in less than two years, has reignited questions about the tense political environment plaguing the United States.

Trump, on the other hand, described his profession as a “dangerous profession” and said that he believed he had become the target of attacks due to the consequences of his presidency.

“The people who do the most, who make the biggest impact are the people they’re going to go after,” Trump told reporters at the White House after being escorted out of the hotel.

He added in an interview on Fox News on Sunday: “If you’re a results-oriented president, you’re in much more danger than if you’re not a results-oriented president.”

As an example, Trump pointed to the war in Iran. latest poll shows contributed to his approval rating dropping to nearly 40%. The president said the war “should have been fought by previous presidents, but nobody did anything about it.”

At dinner on Saturday night, people filed into the hotel to protest the Iran war and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

Two demonstrators wearing suits took part in a photo shoot on the red carpet in the hotel lobby and called for Hegseth to be arrested for war crimes, underscoring how foreign conflict fuels political discourse at home.

In the hours after the shooting, Trump remained defiant. He said in an interview that he was determined to present a united front and not let “some nutjob” derail his agenda or events.

“I hate having a sick, bad person,” he told Fox News on Sunday. “I hate someone like that who changes the course of our country.”